Chapter 20 #3
He was an instant away from opening the door to hurry out after them when clear-headed thought caught up. If he found them, what then? Their only hope was to knock the man out and run.
That turned him around and propelled him to his bedroom to get what he could not afford to leave behind.
He pocketed the contracts that spelled out the Vows taken by him, Beatrix and the other members of Lydia’s inner circle.
He grabbed all the cash he had on hand—not much.
Then he retraced his steps to the cellar, stuffing his coat with leaves.
Heart in his throat, he slipped out the back door.
Beatrix stared at the approximate place where Garrett stood.
She’d known a good bit about him before this moment.
That he would not take the hard path when the downhill slope beckoned.
That he might not entirely like his work, but he wasn’t about to stop.
That he didn’t understand her, for all his protestations of love.
Even so, the plan he’d just laid out was a shock.
“Please—could you explain that again,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself.
“You’re not the one they want. I can cut a deal for you, Beatrix,” he said, his voice soft and patient now, as if this were perfectly rational and he hadn’t been screaming at her in an unhinged manner a moment earlier.
“You’ll testify against Blackwell—they’ll want to do it closed-door, so don’t worry, your reputation won’t be harmed.
Your sister will resign as president of the League, as she should have done right away. And we’ll marry.”
And we’ll marry. Not “and I hope you would agree to marry me, but naturally that would be your choice.” He presented it as a simple tit-for-tat, like a plea deal—except rather than a reduced sentence, she would get life with him.
Did it not occur to him that she might not want this?
Did he give any thought to her preferences and how that would affect his own chance at happiness in marriage, let alone hers?
She would sooner go to prison.
He kept talking—about how she needed to be rescued from the mess her life had become, how she couldn’t be expected to make good decisions all on her own—and she tried to block that out and think through the implications.
If Peter escaped now, he was safe. Lydia’s reputation would be harmed, there was no way around that, but perhaps her sister could overcome it.
After all, if Garrett anticipated a closed-door trial against Peter, didn’t that mean the magiocracy wouldn’t want to alert the public that women could use magic?
And wouldn’t the same hold true for her trial?
She’d be damned if she let Garrett force her sister to stop.
“Oh, Beatrix,” he said, embracing her, missing perhaps that she had not said a word. “We’ll be so happy.”
Her hand—the one not chained to the tree—was pressed awkwardly against his neck.
She could feel the beat of his heart through his carotid artery, no protection spell between them.
And she knew then what she could do, what she had to do, because there was a way to fix everything with magic that required no leaves.
Dozens of mangled crabapples attested to her skill at delivering crushing force.
What would solve this problem—for Lydia, for Peter, for her—was if Garrett were dead. Neck snapped.
Do it.
She pressed her hand more firmly against him, focused, took a deep breath—
The moment of insanity passed. She sagged into him, horror turning her legs to rubber. Her tingling hand fell to her side. Good God, what was wrong with her?
“My darling angel, it’s all right,” Garrett murmured, wiping tears from her face. “I’ll take care of everything. This will be for the best, you’ll see.”
She was trembling everywhere, shivering uncontrollably now, her mind a horrible, buzzing blank. But when he exclaimed, “You’re cold,” she latched onto it like a lifeline.
“Yes—yes,” she said. “Could you … please take me home?”
If he did, she could run—could at least try to escape.
He said nothing, weighing the consequences, perhaps, and she couldn’t guess at what he was thinking because she couldn’t see him.
“I can’t make a promise to you about what my sister will do without speaking to her first,” she added desperately.
The shackle fell from her wrist. It was all she could do not to cry in relief as he said, “I’ll teleport you. We’re outside the house, at least—it might even bring him back faster. But stay there,” he added, an edge to his voice.
She nodded.
The teleportation left her gasping when they came out the other end in her back yard. Her charms burned.
“Hit gewayletseth,” he said, or something that sounded like that, his lips brushing her ear.
The leaf in his hand puffed to smoke, but what his spell did was not clear.
She repeated the spellwords in her head—hit gewayletseth, hit gewayletseth—but couldn’t recall anything like that from Brown’s or other books in Peter’s library.
Then Garrett kissed his way along her jaw. She squeezed her eyes shut, focusing all her strength on not jerking away.
“Remember what I said,” he murmured. “Stay.”
The next moment, he was gone.
Peter stood just shy of the tree line, shattered. He’d been halfway down the hill when he’d seen her—he’d drawn near enough to hear the rumble of Garrett’s voice, definitely Garrett, he’d known it was thrice-damned Garrett, and then—disaster. They’d teleported away.
He slumped onto a log, head in his hands, the heat of his town charms fading against his chest.
Then they burned again—once, twice, followed by an undeniable pop.
He stiffened. Someone had just landed within feet of him—had jumped, it seemed, from somewhere else in town.
Wild hope filled him: Beatrix might not be in Washington after all.
She could have talked Garrett into bringing her home, and now the wizard was back to lie in wait for him.
He inched to his feet, trying to figure out where Garrett was and finding no clues.
It was like that night in his bedroom all over again, both of them invisible, except this time he absolutely had to get to Beatrix and no longer had a red in his pocket.
And instead of carpet, he was surrounded by twigs, undergrowth and all manner of things that would crack or crunch underfoot.
He slipped several leaves out of his pocket, for all the good they would do if Garrett realized where he was.
He put the toe of his right boot down in a spot with nothing but grass, then the heel, then his other foot.
He waited and listened. The forest was so deathly, horribly quiet.
He took another step, walking parallel to the tree line instead of down the path, knowing he would have to get to a safe distance and cut a more difficult route through the woods to Beatrix’s house.
A yard at a time, heart pumping at a dizzying pace, he crept from where he thought Garrett was and wished he could run.
Ella, eating an apple in the kitchen, looked up at her in surprise as she stepped in through the back door. Beatrix almost broke down in front of the hidden camera.
“You’re home early,” Ella said, the unstated question in her eyes: Everything all right?
“I—I don’t feel quite well,” she said.
Ella jumped to her feet. “Let me help you upstairs.”
She helped her all the way up to the third-floor bedroom, where the hidden devices recorded sound only. Beatrix pulled out the notepad they kept in her mother’s nightstand and wrote: Get Lydia and Rosemarie. Emergency.
Ella looked at her for just a second, dread transforming her face, and dashed out. Beatrix, fighting against the overwhelming urge to lie down, grabbed the telephone and dialed Peter’s number. If he answered, she would know he had misunderstood the situation. If he didn’t answer …
He didn’t answer. She gave a silent prayer of thanks and hung up.
By the time Ella returned with both women, Beatrix had finished writing down the essence of what had happened—discovered in the act of spellcasting on the job; Garrett demanding Lydia’s immediate resignation, Peter’s arrest and her hand in marriage; Garrett standing guard at the other end of the forest.
The color drained from Lydia’s face as she read it. Rosemarie’s eyes widened and her lips tightened. Ella put a hand over her mouth.
Rosemarie plucked the pen from Beatrix’s hand and added a response: We can’t all stay in this room. Will look suspicious. I’ll go downstairs and think about what to do.
As she watched her go, Beatrix realized that some part of her expected Rosemarie to snap at her about carelessness and offer a clever solution. You could always count on Rosemarie for a clever solution. But Beatrix’s options now were all bad, and there would be no improving upon them.
Lydia took the pen and got as far as I think we should when Ella grabbed it. B., she wrote, what do you want to do?
Garrett’s question about who always looked out for her had a second correct answer, after all. Ella.
Beatrix expected her sister would argue, but she did not. Both women looked at her, waiting for her reply.
Escape, if I can, or go to jail. Absolutely not marrying Garrett or testifying against OB. She glanced at her sister, her frustrating, inscrutable, beloved sister, and added: If you want to stay the course, you should. I don’t think they’ll want to make public what I was doing.
Ella nodded. Lydia’s expression offered no clue about her opinion.
Where is OB? she wrote.
He seems to know something happened—got into the house without Garrett noticing, Beatrix wrote. Garrett’s standing at the forest’s edge where he can see OB’s house, expecting him to come back.
Ella jumped to her feet and scrawled: I’ll work with Rosemarie to come up with something.
That left Beatrix alone with her sister. She bit her lip and wrote down what Garrett disclosed about the night the crane arm narrowly missed Lydia.
You were right, Beatrix concluded. I was wrong.